Thomas Merton

(1915–1968)

French-born U.S. Catholic writer

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace.”

“The stupidity and blindness of American power, which, in its own terms is perfectly ‘logical’—and yet its terms are fantastically arbitrary and respond only to the ‘reality’ of a thinking that goes on within an artificial and closed system. To defend your own reality and then impose it forcefully on the outside world is paranoia.”

“Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act we have no way of knowing what we are. And the experience of our existence is impossible without some experience of knowing or some experience of experience.”

“Grace, which is charity, contains in itself all virtues in a hidden and potential manner, like the leaves and the branches of the oak hidden in the meat of an acorn. To be an acorn is to have a taste for being an oak tree.”